"Licorice in Every Pharmacy": A Saying That Outlived Its Own Explanation

Korean has a phrase for someone who turns up everywhere: 'licorice in the pharmacy.' The idiom is older than most people who use it realize, and the Donguibogam explains exactly why it made sense.

'Yakbang-e gamcho' (약방에 감초) — 'licorice in the pharmacy' — is still common Korean shorthand for someone or something that shows up in every situation, whether needed specifically or not. Like many surviving idioms, it has outlived the everyday familiarity with the practice that produced it. Most people who use the phrase today have never seen a classical herbal formula. The Donguibogam, however, explains exactly why the saying made sense in the first place.

Not filler — a functional ingredient

The Donguibogam doesn't describe licorice as a neutral flavoring added out of habit. It states, in strikingly specific terms, that licorice alone can settle seventy-two kinds of mineral drugs and twelve hundred kinds of herbs into harmony — a claim of function, not decoration, which is why the text honors it with the title 'elder statesman' (國老). A formula's other ingredients might clash in temperature or intensity; licorice's traditional role was to reconcile them.

An idiom as an artifact

What makes '약방에 감초' worth noticing isn't the ingredient itself, but what the idiom preserves. Language tends to keep phrases long after the specific knowledge behind them fades from common use — the saying is, in effect, a small fossil of a formulary practice most contemporary speakers no longer directly encounter. You can read licorice's full classical entry, including the harmonizing claim behind the idiom, on its herb page.